Linguistics: Selected Websites

"The free Internet site produced by SIL International enjoys a long-standing reputation as a detailed source of descriptive information on the world's 7,000-plus languages" (Choice).

(600-1100 ) The Dictionary of Old English electronic corpus is a complete record of surviving Old English except for some variant manuscripts of individual texts. A catalogue of the texts included is available in Angus Cameron’s “A List of Old English Texts” in A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English, ed. R. Frank and A. Cameron (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), pp. 25-306. There are 3037 texts in the corpus. The individual scholar must take responsibility for clearing copyright with the editors and publishers of the editions used in his/her own citations of the material.

(1100-1500) Includes an electronic version of the Middle English Dictionary; a HyperBibliography of Middle English, which includes all the materials which are cited in the Middle English Dictionary; and the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, a searchable corpus of almost 300 Middle English texts.

Texts "range from copies of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer to William Langland's Piers Plowman, and from texts relating to veterinary medicine to the Chronicle of London."

(1150- ) Documents the history of words in the English language including variant spellings, obsolete forms, combinations, derivatives, and definitions. More limited coverage of scientific and technical vocabulary, slang, jargon, and dialect. Meanings are arranged historically. Includes quotations from novelists, playwrights, journalists, scholars, scientists, legislators, politicians, diarists, saints, philosophers. Includes the full text of the 1989 Second Edition (20 printed volumes) and the 1993-1997 addition series (3 printed volumes). Advance release material for the projected 2010 New (Third) Edition is incorporated quarterly.

Provides access to more than 1 million entries in 175 Oxford University Press titles (mainly subject specialized dictionaries and companions), covering the arts , biological and physical sciences, business and economics, history, politics, philosophy and religion, the classics, mythology, literature, and so forth. Contents include bilingual dictionaries, timelines, biographical entries, maps, more than 20,000 quotations, and 15,000 illustrations. Quick and Advanced search options are available and results can be refined by subject or category.

"The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American English dialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews, oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches. They were drawn from various archives, and from the private collections of fifty collectors, including linguists, dialectologists, and folklorists."

Features access to the AMC Corpora Hub, which "makes available a number of Edinburg-built resources for the study of earlier stages of English and Scots." The Centre also features an excellent online bibliography of sources related to historical linguistics.

"The corpora at this site were created by Mark Davies, Professor of Linguistics at Brigham Young University. These are probably the most widely-used corpora currently available. The corpora have many different uses, including: finding out how native speakers actually speak and write; finding the frequency of words, phrases, and collocates; looking at language variation and change; e.g. historical, dialects, and genres; gaining insight into culture; for example what is said about different concepts over time and in different countries; designing authentic language teaching materials and resources.

"Welcome to DSL, which brings together the two major historical dictionaries of the Scots language: A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST), Older Scots - 12th century - 1700; and The Scottish National Dictionary (SND), Modern Scots - 1700 - 2005. Their 22 volumes provide a comprehensive history of Scots, making DSL an essential research tool for anyone interested in the history and development of the language."

"Over the last several years the LRC has worked to create a robust set of online materials dedicated to the most archaic members of the Indo-European language family, of which English is a member, and the cultures of which they formed a part. We provide these materials freely for public use. Among the LRC's online offerings, Early Indo-European OnLine (EIEOL) provides a collection of lesson series serving as linguistic overviews of many of the most ancient Indo-European languages.... The LRC also provides an online Indo-European Lexicon. This consists of a computer-generated, hand-edited collection of Indo-European roots and their reflexes in daughter languages."

archived papers and presentations of the linguistics faculty at MIT

"Our flagship collection, under development since 1987, covers the history, literature and culture of the Greco-Roman world."